White House Feeds IRS Frenzy by Revising Accounts
The almost daily disclosures by the White House about who knew about an IRS investigation before it became public has helped stoke the furor over the agency’s scrutiny of tax-exempt groups and given the president’s harshest critics an opening.
Over the past week, President Barack Obama’s aides have been amending and revising and offering sometimes conflicting accounts of how the administration learned that an audit found Internal Revenue Service employees improperly selecting “Tea Party” or other small-government groups for extra scrutiny.
Republicans such as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp have seized on the changing stories, accusing Obama of fostering “a culture of cover-ups” that also includes the administration’s reaction to the attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya and the Justice Department’s secret subpoenas of reporters’ telephone records.
“They handled this miserably,” said Ari Fleischer, who was White House press secretary during President George W. Bush’s first term.
The man currently in the job, Jay Carney, suggested he wouldn’t dispute that analysis.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-23/white-house-feeds-irs-frenzy-by-revising-accounts.html